"Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “throw away” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. [Emphasis added] Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us."

This is the darling economic plan of the American right, most recently recycled with the Romney-Ryan election campaign: savage cuts in public aid to the poor accompanied by lavish tax cuts for wealthy Americans. This is the myth and dogma of trickle down economics.

Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, claims his fiscal views are informed by Catholic teaching-- a double layer of religious dogma backed ideological dogma-- but the US Conference of Catholic Bishops says he is full of it.

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Now we have the Pope, leader of the largest Christian Church on the planet, unequivocally condemning the political dogma of the American right as immoral, factually untrue, exploitative, and harmful to the point of being deadly.

So what's a good Christian to do? Consider and address the Pope's actual point? Modify the ideology of greed and exploitation to fit the religion of Jesus, on which the Pope is the supreme authority in the Catholic Church?

Naw. Modify your personal interpretation of the faith to fit the ideology, Paul Ryan style! That way, you can be Christian, Republican, and hate children and the elderly for living in poverty while you cruise by in the limo.

I liked the video, until the guy started talking about Iraq and Somalia. Blaming the problems there on "unfettered capitalism" is just dumb. There are so many more problems in both those places that completely eclipse what ever problems there may or may not be with the economics in those countries.

But yeah, it still amazes me that so many people in America who are religious also agree with economic policies that are completely counter to the message that's in the gospels.

My goodness, @Gallup is quoting His Holiness. And agreeing with him no less!

So do I.

Don't give up on your parents, @Gallup. It takes time to change long-held habits and beliefs. Tell them human life is indeed valuable; the poor child on the streets of our impoverished cities no less than the child in the womb.

It's a bit like being an American in France. It just doesn't work if you speak English LOUDER. Those French are incorrigible.

Try talking to them in their native language, and sometimes they come around, slowly.

On the other hand, the papal condemnation is arriving over a hundred years late.

The Church has been saying the same things for longer than that; you just haven't been listening. Pick up the 1983 U.S. Bishops Letter on the Economy, which was promulgated right in the middle of the Reagan "trickle down" years.